My friends here are big on group cooking events, so I have gotten very good at cutting vegetables for the grill. Skills include red peppers, green peppers, onions and zucchini. O, and I'm an expert at cutting pineapple and papaya now. Applying these skills to my own mini-kitchen, I've gotten hooked on the gigantic carrots they have at the grocery store (I honestly do not know how they get them that big!) Cooked carrots have become a nearly daily dinner occurence now.
 |
| Ridiculously large carrots that I love next to eggs (which are normal sized here) and my finger for comparison. And yes, I'm the weirdo that not only loves carrots but takes pictures of them for a blog. You are welcome. |
But let's get to the real story of this post: There's this certain Nica food called "salpicon" which may be one of the best things I've ever eaten. It's basically boiled beef with lots of salt, lime and onion, according to what they bring for my $1.50 lunch. They only have salpicon one day a week and you never know exactly what day. So it's always exciting.
Anyways, I figured I'd try to make it. Afterall, I was getting so good at cutting vegetables, salpicon seemed like a natural next step. Keep in mind, I'm the girl that generally stick to sandwiches and breakfast foods (yogurt, eggs, cereal, etc) for most meals because they are 1) delicious and 2) easy. The simpler the meal, the better.
First a disclaimer: it's not as easy to cook here as you would think. My stove and oven do not have temperatures. Just max & min. I've now made and burnt 2 pans of brownies and let me tell you, it takes 2-4 soak/scrubs to get crisp brownies off a glass pan.
So why I thought it was a good idea to make salpicon I do not know. But it went like this...
- Went to the grocery store and walked up to the meat counter. I told the lady I wanted to make salpicon and that I didn't know what type of meat I needed. She told me so I asked for 1/2 a pound. She looked at me like I was crazy. I said "is that a lot?" No, apparently that is very little, so I walked away with 1 pound of bloody meat (gross!).
- Came home and looked up a recipe for salpicon. Turns out, I can't find the Nicaragua version anywhere and I don't have the ingredients for the other versions because I have a mini-kitchen, I'm leaving in a month or so and oh, yeah, I don't cook. Just gonna wing it.
- Read a recipe online. The meat has to boil for 1.5-2 hours. It takes twice as long to cook this stupid piece of bloody meat as it does to cook (or burn) brownies. And it's not even chocolate. I decide to freeze the meat.
- A week later I decide it's time to man-up, or woman-up in this case, and cook the darn thing. 2 hours later, it's still not tender. Time for google...
Apparently you shouldn't have it on a high temperature to begin with, even though the recipe said boil, so I put it on the max setting. Oops. But did I seriously think I was actually going to get it right? That would be the day.
- The Bachelor is on and I don't feel like working out quite yet, so I decide to hand-shred this non-tender meat. Being a perfectionist, it takes forever.
- Add the lime and salt, taste it. Not the best, but pretty close. Except now I'm so sick of the smell of onions on my hands and 2 hours of smelling this boiling beef that I've lost my appetite. Into the fridge it goes.
So I made salpicon, or something that I call salpicon. And I probably will never make it again. And I'm going to enjoy my $1.50 salpicon for lunch this week that much more.
Sandwich anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment